Editor’s note: From the Rising of the Sun by Tim Challies and Tim Keesee takes you on an unforgettable journey, showcasing how believers from all corners of the earth praise God in ways that are consistent with Scripture but faithful to the local language, customs, and culture. And here's the best part — this book includes a code for free streaming access to a 12-episode video series, so you can witness these incredible moments of worship for yourself! Enjoy this excerpt from Mexico!
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Mexico City, Mexico
Friday
The sun is shimmering off the high-rise canyon of glass and steel around us as it draws down on this footsore day. Challies and I are staying in the Santa Fe district of Mexico City. Santa Fe is a sparkling showcase of Mexico’s hoped-for future and the up-and-coming tech corridor for the sprawling capital, whose population is now approaching a staggering twenty-two million.
We spent this morning like tourists, joining the throngs downtown as we enjoyed the architecture, gawked at the creepy relics in the National Cathedral, and found good coffee. But the highlight of the day was talking with Nathan as he filled in the blanks of the forty years since I last saw him. Challies and I followed the strand of providence that brought him to this place and prepared him for his unique ministry — one which requires a Swiss Army knife of skill sets.
Pastor Nathan Diáz
Nathan is truly Mexican American thanks to his parents Francisco and Marilyn. “I grew up with both cultures and with both languages,” he remarked. Despite his blonde hair and blue eyes from his mother’s side, Nathan is, in his words, “As culturally Mexican as any Mexican.”
I knew about Nathan’s missionary grandparents on his mom’s side of the family, so I asked about Christianity on his dad’s side. That story turned out to be both tragic and defining. Francisco was born into a divided home: his father was Catholic but his mother was an evangelical. The resulting tensions broke up the family and Francisco’s dad took him away, saying, “Over my dead body will my son become an evangelical!” Two weeks later Francisco’s father died of a heart attack, and the boy went back to the care of his mother. So, Francisco was raised in church and came to faith as a teenager. Marilyn attended the same church, so she and Francisco grew up together — and later married and served Christ together.
Francisco was active in evangelism and planting churches in Mexico City. He also ran a printing operation for Wycliffe Bible Translators, who put the Scriptures into indigenous dialects. One of the churches that Francisco planted met in the print shop after Wycliffe phased out that location — and it’s the church which Nathan now pastors and where he shared his story with us this afternoon.
Nathan was inspired to work in Christian radio by an uncle who broadcast gospel messages into Cuba from Texas, so Nathan chose Moody Bible Institute for college because of that school’s reputation for radio ministry. He graduated, married Christin, and had a kind of Macedonian call to “come over... and help us” — only this call was a phone call from his dad. Nathan recounted:
I was in Chicago when my dad started this church, and he invited me to come and set up a recording studio at the church. He also wanted me to help with teaching. “That’s cool,” I thought. So, I came back to Mexico City with my wife in 2001. The church was only two or three years old at that time, but it was growing. So, I started helping my dad with the pastoral part of the ministry, and I grew into that role. People started seeing me as a pastor because I was teaching and learning to do counseling and other things — of course, all with my dad’s oversight. Over the years, I became one of the elders at the church.
But in 2018, my dad suddenly passed away. My mom had been diagnosed with cancer that year and was struggling with her health, and then one Sunday after church my dad had a heart attack and died. Two weeks later my mom also passed away. So, 2018 was a hard year. It’s one thing to lose family, but losing family you are doing ministry with is an additional level of loss.
Nathan was then asked by the church to be its lead pastor, and since then he not only leads here but also continues his radio broadcast work. He records Bible programming and music from that same studio that his dad made a place for here in the church building. Nathan’s radio program has been going since 2007 and is now on over one hundred radio stations across Latin America and Spain. In addition, because of Nathan’s linguistic and cultural fluency between two worlds he has been able to assist a number of American ministries expand their outreach and online resources to the Spanish-speaking world. For example, Nathan is the “voice” of Dr. John Piper as he interprets the “Ask Pastor John” broadcast from Desiring God in Minneapolis.
But Nathan isn’t just a conduit for American ministries. His heart is in serving his church — and many other churches in Mexico. He told us:
I am mindful that I cannot just be building my own platform. I feel like my ministry is to use whatever resources God has given me to encourage, motivate, and help other pastors and people God puts in my way. I want to see their ministries grow. We always have a temptation to focus on our own thing instead of looking outside of ourselves to see how we can be a blessing to others and promote other ministries. That’s one of the challenges I’ve had over the years — trying not to build just my own little empire.
We talked about the blessings and challenges of American ministries that are expanding into the Latin American world. Nathan is gifted by background and experience to have good insight on this matter, saying:
Because of our closeness with the States, Mexico and the U.S. have always had a lot of interaction. Missionaries and resources flow into Mexico a lot easier than into other countries of Latin America because you can drive across the border. You know Star Wars, right? It’s like the gravitational force of the Death Star! But it really is just a matter of geography. Our secular culture is very influenced by American culture — we have the same stores, the same restaurants, and the same products. Everything seems very Americanized here.
That’s OK, but I think the danger is when people look at theology the same way. They think something is cool because it comes from America. How do we help people understand when we are bringing resources from the States that it’s not because these come from the States that they are good — that they are good only if they are biblical? That’s the point. It’s not because these things are from America — it’s because they originate from the Word of God. That’s a struggle.
Nathan believes that the best resources build up the Church rather than someone’s brand. And in building the Church, they are building up leaders. He said:
The Church has actually grown in Latin America to the point that we can produce our own teaching material. We don’t always need to import things. Sometimes it’s useful to do that, but we should be growing our own teachers and our own theologians and pastors, who can start having influence here as well as in other places.
Talking with Nathan today, Challies and I were struck not only by this young pastor’s vision and skill but also with his discernment and humility.
- Nathan is a five-talent servant, quietly working with all that has been put into his hands to increase the fame of his Master.
Sunday
Nathan met us early this morning and drove us to Iglesia Evangelica Cuajimalpa. While the musicians went through their set, the room filled up for the morning service. If you know the building’s backstory, you can make out the fingerprints of its past as a Bible warehouse for Wycliffe. I see the high walls of the auditorium where pallets of books were once stacked; and the loading dock where trucks once came and went is now the church’s front entrance. Francisco’s printshop-turned-church plant is now adorned with worshippers!
Sunday morning service at Iglesia Evangelica Cuajimalpa
The opening hour of the Sunday service is spent in heart preparation for the Lord’s Supper through songs, prayers, and reminders from the Word. We began with Spanish translations of hymns old and new:
Come, thou Fount of every blessing;
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.1
We also sang “Jesus, Thank You” (Gracias, Cristo):
Your blood has washed away my sin Jesus, thank You
The Father’s wrath completely satisfied Jesus, thank You
Once your enemy, now seated at Your table Jesus, thank You.2
One of the elders led in a brief meditation, a Reflexión Biblica, from 2 Corinthians 3:18,
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Then the deacons served the bread and the cup. We waited on each other, took the meal together, and then sang a hymn of assurance. It was a sweet hour together, as those of us who were once enemies were “now seated at Your table. Jesus, thank You!”
For the morning message, Nathan asked Challies to preach. All along this Worship Around the World journey we have both been invited to preach the sermon, but we have politely refused in order to keep ourselves as fellow worshippers with the congregation. But today was different. A close friend of Tim’s had died of cancer just a few days before he left for this trip, and he had much on his heart to say. So, he agreed to preach. The old Puritan Thomas Watson famously said,
“That prayer is most likely to pierce Heaven which first pierces one’s own heart.”3
Sermons can be like that, too. Tim’s heart had been pierced by his friend’s death and example, and so the message pierced our own hearts this morning with resurrection hope.
This morning’s passage was from Acts 13, where Paul and Barnabas were passing through Antioch in Pisidia. I smiled when I realized that the situation here today was not unlike the setting then when the rulers of the synagogue said to the visiting Paul and Barnabas,
Brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it. — Acts 13:15
So, the apostle Paul was called upon to preach rather suddenly — and so was Tim. As Nathan interpreted, Tim took the passage up in Acts 13:36:
For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers.
Pastor Nathan interpreting for Tim Challies
Tim pointed out four words to lead us through the verse and to guide us in life: Serve, Sleep, Rest, and Rise. Living well begins with serving God in the time and place we’ve been given on this side of Heaven, but the idea of serving God — rather than the god of self — is countercultural in our generation. Tim said:
My friend, you have been told that there is an authentic self within you. You have been told that things like parents and authority and the Christian faith will hinder you from finding and expressing it. You have been told you will be happy only to the degree that you are able to discover and live out your innermost, self-created, supposedly authentic self.
But I want you to know this is a lie. The path to happiness and fulfillment and contentment — the way to be your truest and best and most significant self — is to orient your life around God and His purpose — to find great delight in Him and to bring glory to His name. There is no better life than this... because this is the very reason God made you: to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.
There is an important connection between your delight in God and your usefulness to the people around you — or between your delight in God and living out your purpose. As you delight in God, you will find delight in serving others. As you find joy in Him, you will most joyfully bless others. The key to everything is to keep loving God and pursuing Him, to keep reading His Word and praying to Him, and to keep joining God’s people in worship. And as your delight in Him grows, so will your longing to live for the good of other people.
Tim went on to speak of sleep and said something profoundly true and winsome:
The Bible often refers to death as “sleep,” and there is beauty and comfort in that picture. Death might scare you, but sleep doesn’t. Sleep is familiar to you. It’s a familiar friend. It’s a friend that simply delivers you from night to day, and from darkness to light. You know that once you’ve slept you will awaken — you’ll arise to a new day.
Paul’s sermon led his listeners to the resurrection:
And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this He has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus. — Acts 13:32–33
And Tim’s sermon did this as well.
Tim then concluded:
You don’t know how long you have to live, but you do know how to live that time well. The life of meaning and significance is the life of a servant — to be a servant like Jesus, to be a servant like David, and to be a servant like my friend — all of whom served faithfully to the very end. You don’t need to be famous. You don’t need to be wealthy or beautiful or powerful. You just need to be faithful — to be faithful in the short time God gives you, to serve out your days for something bigger and greater than yourself, and then to be with God forever. The best life is the one that is lived to serve God’s purpose in your own generation — a life of knowing God and enjoying God and finding great delight in God. Out of the overflow of that delight, you can love and bless and serve — to give all you’ve got to do good to others for the glory of God.
To repeat Paul’s words, “we bring you the good news that what God promised... He has fulfilled... by raising Jesus.” And that gospel of the resurrection is why we gathered this Sunday in Mexico. It’s why we shared in the bread and the cup. It’s why we sang with joy and prayed with purpose. It’s why we listened to the Word preached with power. And it’s why we can embrace strangers as family in a bond that’s deeper than blood and stronger than death.
On this day, we remembered that day of days when Jesus rose from the grave.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. — John 1:4
His life-giving light still shines undimmed across all nations, and it will shine even to the city that has “no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for... the Lamb is the light thereof.”4
1. Robert Robinson, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” 1758.
2. Pat Sczebel, “Jesus, Thank You” (“Gracias, Cristo”), © 2003 Integrity’s Hosanna! Music/ASCAP, Sovereign Grace Worship/ASCAP (adm. by Integrity Music), Sovereign Grace Music, a division of Sovereign Grace Churches, accessed January 23, 2025, https://sovereigngracemusic.com/music/songs/jesus-thank-you/. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
3. Robert Elmer, ed., Piercing Heaven: Prayers of the Puritans (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2019), 60.
4. Revelation 21:23 KJV.
Excerpted with permission from From the Rising of the Sun by Tim Challies and Tim Keesee, copyright Tim Challies and Tim Keesee.
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Your Turn
When we enter into worship, we join our brothers and sisters all over the world (and all the angels in Heaven) in praising God! Isn’t that glorious? ~ Devotionals Daily